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At Coretta Scott King's funeral in early 2006, Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert Kennedy, leaned over to him and whispered, "The torch is being passed to you." "A chill went up my spine," Obama told an aide. (Newsweek)

Watership Down. It will always be my favorite book. GWTW is up there too.

Never read Watership down, but GWTW was great. There's a book called Bringing out the Dead about paramedics that I really liked. When I was a kid, my fav book was The Three Musketeers. I was a nerd. :Da

They're not people, they're hippies!! -Cartman

It is nothing against you to fall down flat, but to lie there - that's disgrace

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. It's not about whales; it's about obsession and what it can do to you. This should not be assigned in high schools; no high schooler can understand the real theme, and everyone can understand it by the age of forty.

Home Life, by Alice Thomas Ellis. Her essays for The Spectator on her attempts to deal with her disorderly house, family, and mind are by turns touching and laugh-out-loud funny.

The Missing of the Somme, by Geoff Dyer. It's not so much about the First World War as it is about the function of memory - anticipated memory, memory of fairly current events, and how memory changes over time as events recede into the past.

Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons. The Starkadder family of Cold Comfort Farm are set in order and put to rights by a cousin from the city who refuses to accommodate their nonsense.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been vilified on the "worst books" thread, so let me cast a vote of confidence for him here.

Never read Watership down, but GWTW was great. There's a book called Bringing out the Dead about paramedics that I really liked. When I was a kid, my fav book was The Three Musketeers. I was a nerd. :Da

I don't know if reading Watership Down as an adult would have the same effect but give it a try anyway. Bringing out the Dead was a Cage movie, right? I don't think I ever made it through the movie.

A Tale Of Two Cities by Dickens. There's a reason why they make us read it in 8th or 9th grade, it's a great story of love, history and sacrifice.

My favorite modern novel is East Of Eden by Steinbeck. I like family sagas, and this one has characters as diverse as an Irish-American farmer and his strictly religious and thoroughly practical wife, a rich man from the east who thinks he can control nature, a madam who runs a house that caters to the darker pleasures, and a chinese manservant who studies philosophy on the side.

I saw someone named The Witching Hour as one of the worst novels-it's one of my favorites, although I concede that the ending sucks, and Rowan and Michael should have killed the SOB once it took on flesh. But the build up is so awesome, and the family history of the Mayfairs. I also love the character of Carlotta, the seemingly evil old aunt.